Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

Born in Alabama and raised in Florida, Hurston (1891-1960) was an anthropologist, novelist, and folklorist. As a creative writer, she authored such famous works as Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934). As a folklorist, she went on expeditions, gathering folklore for works like Mules and Men (1935). For her anthropological training, she completed undergraduate studies at Howard University and Barnard College and graduate studies at Columbia University. She first became acquainted with Oluale Kossola while she was at Barnard College. Her advisor, Dr. Franz Boas, known as the father of anthropology, sent her to meet him. The objective of that first visit was to “get a firsthand report of the raid that had brought him to America and bondage” (36). This visit, and her anthropological training overall, led her to develop a friendship with Kossola and interview him for what became Barracoon.

Although Hurston studied anthropology, it was important to her that her research practices differed from standard practices that regarded studied peoples as objects. Plant (the 21st-century editor of Barracoon) writes in her introduction to the text that Hurston “rejected the objective-observer stance of Western scientific inquiry for a participant-observer stance” (24). This is especially significant in the study of an African—Kossola—given the long history of racist scholars and intellectuals deeming Africans as lacking humanity.